Fixed, mobile North American broadband speeds will more than double by 2023, Cisco study says

20 March 2020 by Steve Blum
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Cisco forecast 2018 2023

More and more people around the world will have access to faster and faster broadband connections, with speeds for fixed and mobile service doubling and tripling by 2023, due in large part to increased global deployment of fiber to the premise and 5G technology, according to a white paper recently published by Cisco. Although North America will continue to beat world broadband speed averages, the U.S. will not be among the leaders in advanced infrastructure deployment.… More

Booming prime time video peaks will slam broadband networks over the next five years

28 November 2018 by Steve Blum
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Three-quarters of all Internet traffic is video and that share will grow to 82% over the next five years, according to the latest update to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, which is an ongoing broadband tracking study published by the company. Cisco also projects that global Internet traffic will more than triple over that time.

In other words, video is why there’s rapidly rising demand for faster broadband service speeds, and greater capacity. Not just because there’s more of it, but also because people don’t watch it consistently over the course of the day: the ballooning volume of video traffic is crammed into prime viewing hours.… More

Wikileaks' CIA dump plugs massive Cisco security hole

25 March 2017 by Steve Blum
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If you look into the core of the Internet or just in a typical corporate or institutional data center, you’ll see rack after rack loaded with switches, routers and other gear made by Cisco. A vulnerability in even one of their products can leave a lot of networks and data open to attack. So you might come to the conclusion that spotting that kind of flaw and fixing it as quickly as possible is matter of national security.… More

Supreme Court considering whether it's a good idea to open up a new feeding ground for patent trolls

26 June 2013 by Steve Blum
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Looks like one of those divided infringements. Let’s eat it.

The U.S. Supreme Court finished its current session this week with a flurry of action, momentous and otherwise. Lost in the fireworks generated by rulings on gay rights, racial preferences and voting rules though, was its decision to take a look at an intellectual property case that, depending on where it eventually goes, could create a vast new opportunity for patent trolls and trial lawyers to line their pockets.… More

Building on a broadband lead

15 June 2013 by Steve Blum
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Blocking strategy.

Akamai, a leading content delivery network provider, publishes periodic performance reports that ranks global Internet service by country. Its latest figures put Korea, Japan and Hong Kong at the top of the chart.

That doesn’t tell the whole story, though. The Akamai numbers show how fast traffic is moving on its network, not how much of it there is. So having, say, super fast connections in gaming centers and clusters of homes with gigabit class connections can skew the rankings.… More

Don't predict African broadband growth with consensus and conventional wisdom

2 June 2013 by Steve Blum
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African traffic coming thicker and faster.

Cisco’s latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) shows global data traffic tripling over the next five years, growing to a level of 121,000 petabytes per month. North America and the Asia-Pacific region are the the big hitters, then and now, each accounting for roughly a third of total Internet traffic. Africa and the Middle East, on the other hand, barely registers. The report projects faster growth there, but even so that region’s share of global data movement will only go from about 2% of the total to 3%.… More

Internet video won't flourish in a walled garden

1 June 2013 by Steve Blum
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Source: Cisco VNI 2012-2017

By 2017 Internet protocol video traffic will triple worldwide, according to Cisco’s latest Visual Networking Index (VNI). It’s an annual estimate of how Internet and Internet protocol traffic will grow over the coming five years.

IP video traffic totalled 24,000 petabytes a month during 2012 and is projected to grow to 76,000 petabytes a month in 2017.

The share of Internet protocol video delivered inside a walled garden will gradually decline, although like everything else it will continue to increase in absolute terms.… More

WiFi has huge role in mobile capacity management

16 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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There’s a reason Cisco bought Meraki.

Four times as much traffic goes via WiFi as on mobile data connections, when users’ Android smart phones and tablets have the capability to do both. A recent mobile data study by Cisco showed that, worldwide, the average Android owner sent 55.4 MB of data on WiFi connections and only 13.9 MB via mobile data networks on the average day in December 2012.

Cisco’s conclusion is that tablet and smart phone customers are using WiFi as a way of “staying within the limits of their cellular data plans”.… More

Mobile data caps starting to shift costs to heavier users

15 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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The whales don’t stand out as much anymore.

Three years ago, unlimited data plans accounted for 81% of monthly mobile subscriptions worldwide. Now, only 45% are unlimited, according to research conducted by Cisco.

With or without monthly caps, the growth in mobile data traffic is booming, but Cisco’s white papers shows a change in usage patterns corresponding to this business model shift.

Unlimited plans still generate more traffic per user, with an average of 1.3 GB per month versus 922 MB for tiered subscribers.… More

Health care driving mobile M2M traffic

10 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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Bits keep you fit.

Some time this year, we’ll hit the point where there are more connected devices on mobile networks than there are people on the planet. That doesn’t mean everyone everywhere will have a smartphone. A lot of people have more than one device, of course. And a growing share of those connections don’t involve human beings at all.

According to a report on worldwide mobile data traffic just released by Cisco, 369 million machine-to-machine (M2M) devices accounted for 3% of global traffic last year.… More